Avram Davidson was an author of SF, fantasy, and mystery fiction, who was born in 1923 in Yonkers, New York. He served as a Navy hospital medic with the Marine Corps in the Pacific during World War II, and began his writing career as a Talmudic scholar around 1950.

His best-known works are his novels about Vergil Magus, the Peregrine novels, the Jack Limekiller stories, and the stories of Dr. Esterhazy, a more erudite Sherlock Holmes-like figure. His collections of SF stories include Or All the Seas with Oysters (1962) and The Other Nineteenth Century (2001).